The Year of Young People

Hello,

                      

We are Tracy Stephen, CAMHS Teams manager, Eileen Boyes, Consultant/Lead Clinical Psychologist for CAMHS, Suzanne Mills and Frances Brown, Clinical Psychologists for the Early Intervention Service.

This is the Year of Young People and NHS Lanarkshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) has worked hard to ensure children, young people and their families receive appropriate and effective intervention for mental health problems. The CAMH Service is committed to securing young people’s views to help shape the services we provide.  

Involving Young People in Services in Scotland

There is a drive by the Scottish Government to put young people at the centre of services and North Lanarkshire Council are encouraging organisations to hear young people’s views with their ‘Ask Me’ initiative.  The newly launched #NLCAskme campaign, involving partnership between agencies who have responsibility for children and young people, aims to encourage organisations to use social media to say ‘we agree’ to young people’s views being heard. 

The North Lanarkshire Children's Services Partnership involves all agencies who have a responsibility for children and young people in joint planning and improvement of children's services in North Lanarkshire.  Louisa McCearney, Chair of North Lanarkshire Youth Council and MSYP, signed the agreement along with Alison Gordon, Interim Chair of North Lanarkshire Children's Services Partnership and Head of Children, Families and Justice Social Work Services. CAMHS fully support #NLCAskme.

How Lanarkshire CAMHS are Involving Young People and Families

Service Evaluation

At CAMHS, we always want to improve the experiences that young people and their families have when accessing our service. We have recently completed a service evaluation, asking young people and their parents or carers to let us know what they think of CAMHS by filling in a questionnaire. The feedback we received has been really positive.

Over 80% of young people and their parents and carers who are involved with CAMHS in Lanarkshire reported that CAMHS staff are easy to talk to and that they offer good help. Over 90% of people accessing CAMHS felt they were listened to by staff, well treated, and taken seriously, with over 85% stating they would recommend CAMHS to a friend.

Focus Groups

CAMHS are supporting Year of Young People by giving 12-18 year olds across Lanarkshire the opportunity to be involved in service design.  We have invited young people accessing CAMHS to attend a series of Focus Groups, in which they will be asked about how we can improve the service and what we should be asking future CAMHS service-users. Young people who participate, can use this experience as an option for the Volunteering section of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards!

Service User Experiences of New Projects within CAMHS

An exciting new service within CAMHS is being developed in Lanarkshire. With support from NHS Education for Scotland, Clinical Psychologists in CAMHS are training School Nurses and Educational Psychologists, and in future other school staff, in Low Intensity Anxiety Management. The aim of this is to create a bigger workforce with the skills to help young people with anxiety effectively. Young people involved in this project will be asked for their feedback about any improvement as well as their experience.

In the past year we have been working with early years workers, education and social work staff to deliver an evidence based parenting programme (The Incredible Years) across North and South Lanarkshire for parents of 3 to 6 year olds (NES Psychology of Parenting Project). Feedback will be gathered from families taking part once the groups have been completed.

Continued CAMHS Development and Improvement

We have completed some research on referrals we have not accepted, to try and identify where referrals are either best directed to another service, or to help us identify any gaps or work more creatively.

If you have an experience of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service you would like to share, please speak to a member of staff, respond on Care Opinion, or visit the “Your Feedback” Section of the NHS Lanarkshire website to see the other ways to get in touch.

Please visit the CAMHS website for further information and a list of helpful resources:

www.nhslanarkshire.org.uk/Services/CAMHS

Thank you to all the young people, parents and carers who have already supported CAMHS by sharing their experiences. We hope we can continue to ensure children, young people and their families remain at the heart of our mental health provision.

If you have an experience of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service you would like to share, please speak to a member of staff, respond on Care Opinion, or visit the “Your Feedback” Section of the NHS Lanarkshire website to see the other ways to get in touch www.nhslanarkshire.org